+1 I use several portable apps. I have them installed locally, but on a separate partition. Keeps things nice and orderly on my hard drive. I keep them backed up (with Synctoy) to a flash drive that I can unplug and take with me to any computer.

I got mine through the HUP as well. I do love Office, but I wouldn't have it if I'd had to pay full price. Not when there are other options like Glen mentioned. It would be hard to part with OneNote, though. Love my OneNote.

+1 just means "I support / agree with what I just quoted". Internet shorthand.

OneNote is part of the full version of office. Info here: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/onenote/ Kind of along the same lines as Evernote, a free program that does similar things. You can use it to collect and organize information, make outlines, that sort of thing.

I use it to compile policy documents and training materials, which I then export to Publisher (also part of Office) for formatting.

I don't use it for writing projects, though. I use the features in Scrivener for that.

I'm so used to using Word, I'd be hesitant to use O.O. or L.O.. I end up using Sigil so I'd be interested to know if O.O. and L.O. are compatible with Sigil. What's your opinion of them in general, esp. compared to Word?

I like and use LibreOffice and have used Open Office up until about a month ago. The User interface is different from Word, but nothing so different that a moderately intelligent person can't become reasonably productive within a few minutes of use.

I chose to switch to LO because I liked the UI a bit better and it seemed a bit snappier in performance. But OO is just fine and now that Apache is managing OO development, I think we will see real progress in keeping it current.

I don't use Sigil, so I don't know what it's compatibility requirements are. However both OO and LO can save in several flavors of the following text file formats, odf, xml, doc, docx,rtf, txt. They say LO is more compatible with Word, but I've never noticed any sort of difference. Maybe I'm not too particular, I don't know.

Since both LO and OO are free for both personal and commercial use, you have no costs associated for an extended trial. Even if you decide to stay with MS Office, you win by trying them out, since at least you will know if they are for you or not.

OneNote is a notes database application. It allows you to take notes and store them for quick and easy retrieval.

I've found ZIM desktop Wiki to be a similar application. It is OpenSource and as such it is free for both personal and commercial use.

Tomboy is another popular open source note taking application, but I prefer Zim for Windows, but Zim is not available for Unbutu Linux in an easy to install format, (so when I'm using Unbutu, Zim is not available).

Edit: By coincidence, I have just discovered ZIM IS available for Unbutu. If you go to the Unbutu Software Center, you will find it filed under Accessories and not under Office

I'm so used to using Word, I'd be hesitant to use O.O. or L.O.. I end up using Sigil so I'd be interested to know if O.O. and L.O. are compatible with Sigil. What's your opinion of them in general, esp. compared to Word?

There is an extension/plug-in Writer2xhtml that will allow you to export from OpenOffice or LibreOffice to EPub - which you can then open in Sigil for a final tidy-up. Writer2xhtml does a very good job of producing a fairly clean epub, but like all office software, there's generally some invisible detritus in there that I like to eliminate (and I'm also obsessive about other things ).

I hope after you get done using Word, that you do take the time to clean your ePub of Word's mess.

Wolfie, Wolfie, Wolfie, my fave curmudgeon:

LORD! Really, you gotta get off that pony. Word's built-in styles are naught more than a GUI for CSS. That's it. That's Word's big secret. If someone pays ANY attention at all to using Word's styles, the resulting document is 5-mins of clean-up, pre-export, if that. Export, nuke the big old internal SS at the top of the html page, and slap in your own stylesheet. That's it.

Trust me, we see everything under the Sun here; LO, OO, Wordperfect, cobbled-together HTML, PDF's, faux-Word files exported from Acrobat (the WORST, period), and everything else, and a Word file created by someone who actually bothered to learn how to use it is the cleanest thing out there. Throw in the document NavMap and you can almost export directly to Sigil for epub-making.

You know I do this for a living, and I wouldn't even think twice about using Word to create a manuscript that I was going to subsequently turn into an ePUB. Even cruddy manuscripts can usually be cleaned up with some Regex. Obviously, YMMV, but it's not the program: it's the user. If someone bangs along using Ad Hoc styles, well, yeah, you're gonna get cruft. Someone tries to "convert" a PDF with Adobe Acrobat into Word, worse cruft, but that's Adobe, not Word. Someone invests 20 minutes in taking MS' online tutorial on styles? You're practically home-free on conversion. I mean it.

Hitch, Doesn't the document NavMap get in there automatically somehow when you put the Word doc (via turning it into .html) into Sigil? (If not, how do I "throw it in there"?) (You "threw" me with this.)

Got a link for the MS online tutorial on styles? (I'm using MS Office Word 2003, if that matters.)

+1 just means "I support / agree with what I just quoted". Internet shorthand.

OneNote is part of the full version of office. Info here: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/onenote/ Kind of along the same lines as Evernote, a free program that does similar things. You can use it to collect and organize information, make outlines, that sort of thing.

I use it to compile policy documents and training materials, which I then export to Publisher (also part of Office) for formatting.

I don't use it for writing projects, though. I use the features in Scrivener for that.

I like and use LibreOffice and have used Open Office up until about a month ago. The User interface is different from Word, but nothing so different that a moderately intelligent person can't become reasonably productive within a few minutes of use.

I chose to switch to LO because I liked the UI a bit better and it seemed a bit snappier in performance. But OO is just fine and now that Apache is managing OO development, I think we will see real progress in keeping it current.

I don't use Sigil, so I don't know what it's compatibility requirements are. However both OO and LO can save in several flavors of the following text file formats, odf, xml, doc, docx,rtf, txt. They say LO is more compatible with Word, but I've never noticed any sort of difference. Maybe I'm not too particular, I don't know.

Since both LO and OO are free for both personal and commercial use, you have no costs associated for an extended trial. Even if you decide to stay with MS Office, you win by trying them out, since at least you will know if they are for you or not.

thanks Glen. I'm going to check them both out. (there's just so many options) (and what the heck, I think I'm moderately intelligent)

OneNote is a notes database application. It allows you to take notes and store them for quick and easy retrieval.

I've found ZIM desktop Wiki to be a similar application. It is OpenSource and as such it is free for both personal and commercial use.

Tomboy is another popular open source note taking application, but I prefer Zim for Windows, but Zim is not available for Unbutu Linux in an easy to install format, (so when I'm using Unbutu, Zim is not available).

Edit: By coincidence, I have just discovered ZIM IS available for Unbutu. If you go to the Unbutu Software Center, you will find it filed under Accessories and not under Office

There is an extension/plug-in Writer2xhtml that will allow you to export from OpenOffice or LibreOffice to EPub - which you can then open in Sigil for a final tidy-up. Writer2xhtml does a very good job of producing a fairly clean epub, but like all office software, there's generally some invisible detritus in there that I like to eliminate (and I'm also obsessive about other things ).

Thanks gmw. This sounds too good to be true. (I looked at the link.) It seemed like Glen favored LibreOffice, so if I compose in LibreOffice, then I export to EPub, then to Sigil for the final tidy-up, I'll be good to go.

I've got a couple of novels in Word 2003 still so those will be what I'll be working on for a bit, but I'm definitely keeping your suggestion in mind for future projects. Thanks a lot.

Writer2xhtml at this point, doesn't claim compatibility with LibreOffice V4. If you want to use it without any surprises, you might be advised to use one of the older versions of OO or LO it claims compatibility with.

While both OO and LO make it easy to download the latest version, the older versions remain available for situations like this. Yet another reason to love the Open Source concept!